Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scrum is a cancer

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 486 posts

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#291

Post by jauntywundrkind »

nine_zeros wrote: post #277
lpapez wrote: post #274

In one of my previous projects I lead a team of 5 talented and creative people and we did truly agile programming: everyone helped each other, asynchronous meets as needed, spontaneous pair programming, direct access to the customer (who also happened to be technical people with a clear picture in mind)... Truly a joy of a team to lead, because they really lead themselves :) However, the management insisted that we a…

> After three months, the progress slowed to a crawl, star dev abandoned ship, and customers started complaining for the first time. > Now I will just wait for someone to tell me that this wasn't real Scrum either, because we were supposed to have Product Owner talk to the client instead of Scrum Master :) Oh wait till management finds engineers to scapegoat for their own decisions. If there is one truth about manage…

Yet to find a company where the folks down the reporting ladder can rate how they perceived various initiatives to have gone. So weird how businesses just don't want to hear how "Implement formal agile process" (or other goals) went.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#292

Post by baz00 »

idkyall wrote: post #273

I think there's a bit of selection bias here in that only people who are either very enamored or very unhappy with scrum are going to respond to a hot take on twitter. But, that's besides the point. Scrum doesn't exist to make developer's lives easier. In my experience as a SWE in a scrum team, devs have basically always felt like our time is being wasted in meetings. Scrum, imo, exists so that management and busines…

The meetings are good. You're getting paid during them. I managed to customise my bike, plan two international adventures, run a side business and do a year of a degree in pointless meetings in the last 5 years!

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#293

Post by Scarblac »

stillbourne wrote: post #281

"Agile is a cult." Is a refrain I've had for a few years. I don't mean like the agile process, I mean the agile culture. I went to an agile conference for work and the things they talked about were just really really dumb, I swear they almost professed that agile could cure cancer.

I think it's Scrum that's a cult, agile works fine in the rare place that does it.

But to me it just means trusting the devs, close cooperation within the team and with the customer, iterative development, continuously refining the bits of process you have to fit the needs of the devs at the moment.

Not something you have conferences about.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#294

Post by WJW »

nine_zeros wrote: post #277
lpapez wrote: post #274

In one of my previous projects I lead a team of 5 talented and creative people and we did truly agile programming: everyone helped each other, asynchronous meets as needed, spontaneous pair programming, direct access to the customer (who also happened to be technical people with a clear picture in mind)... Truly a joy of a team to lead, because they really lead themselves :) However, the management insisted that we a…

> After three months, the progress slowed to a crawl, star dev abandoned ship, and customers started complaining for the first time. > Now I will just wait for someone to tell me that this wasn't real Scrum either, because we were supposed to have Product Owner talk to the client instead of Scrum Master :) Oh wait till management finds engineers to scapegoat for their own decisions. If there is one truth about manage…

Of course. Because they don't produce outputs directly, reputation is all a manager has to prove their worth to the company. If you take that away by publicly demonstrating how their actions caused bad results, their boss might well fire them since they are apparently being a net negative. Managers face a much more difficult labor market than most engineers too.

So to exaggerate a little bit, not accepting "I told you so" from their reports is directly required to keep paying their mortgage and feeding their children. It's not weird that they get upset when you endanger their livelihood. OP has got the right idea and is just being zen about it IMO.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#295

Post by matwood »

nottorp wrote: post #285
notjoemama wrote: post #276

I don’t mind scrum, specifically the daily stand up. In an old job a couple non-contributors became obvious. And so has been my work ethic. I benefit from that because I’m naturally the kind of person to get things done. Despite my good feelings about it, I also see how often it’s used as a) an excuse to micromanage and b) a mechanism to feed leadership’s need for attention. I don’t know if this is accurate or not, b…

> In an old job a couple non-contributors became obvious. So your management wasn't doing their job? They're supposed to know who's working and who isn't regardless of what rituals are practiced.

Or they did their job by implementing scrum?

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#296

Post by notjoemama »

nottorp wrote: post #285
notjoemama wrote: post #276

I don’t mind scrum, specifically the daily stand up. In an old job a couple non-contributors became obvious. And so has been my work ethic. I benefit from that because I’m naturally the kind of person to get things done. Despite my good feelings about it, I also see how often it’s used as a) an excuse to micromanage and b) a mechanism to feed leadership’s need for attention. I don’t know if this is accurate or not, b…

> In an old job a couple non-contributors became obvious. So your management wasn't doing their job? They're supposed to know who's working and who isn't regardless of what rituals are practiced.

That’s exactly right! I’ve had that same exact thought. Had they been making any kind of effort to “manage” that would’ve been dealt with much sooner. We didn’t necessarily need daily stand ups, but they ended up being the mechanism management used to figure out who was not performing. I have often wondered if a simple cursory check in would’ve accomplished the same thing. All the meeting and processional hand waving might’ve been unnecessary.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#297

Post by nine_zeros »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #291
nine_zeros wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After three months, the progress slowed to a crawl, star dev abandoned ship, and customers started complaining for the first time. > Now I will just wait for someone to tell me that this wasn't real Scrum either, because we were supposed to have Product Owner talk to the client instead of Scrum Master :) Oh wait till management finds engineers to scapegoat for their own decisions. If there is one truth about manage…

Yet to find a company where the folks down the reporting ladder can rate how they perceived various initiatives to have gone. So weird how businesses just don't want to hear how "Implement formal agile process" (or other goals) went.

It's because companies are far more obsessed with power structures than with actual output. This is especially true for public companies where the grift is to get into positions of power, propose "initiatives", find scapegoats for failures, then hop on to another company - leaving a trail of damage behind.

In my experience, the only time a company does well with structures is when there are fewer levels in the org chart and when the C-Suite penalizes management before ICs.

Doesn't happen very often though.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#298

Post by notjoemama »

paulcole wrote: post #284
notjoemama wrote: post #276

I don’t mind scrum, specifically the daily stand up. In an old job a couple non-contributors became obvious. And so has been my work ethic. I benefit from that because I’m naturally the kind of person to get things done. Despite my good feelings about it, I also see how often it’s used as a) an excuse to micromanage and b) a mechanism to feed leadership’s need for attention. I don’t know if this is accurate or not, b…

> I think overall it’s a bit of a waste of time for me The company isn't trying to optimize for best use of your time individually or to make you happy. They are trying to get some kind of result. And it very well may be worth inconveniencing and annoying higher performers to improve the performance of lower performers to achieve the result they want.

Huh, hadn’t thought of that. Thank you.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#300

Post by WJW »

lispisok wrote: post #279
11235813213455 wrote: post #270

agile, scrum, sprints are all bullshit, software & development are endurance, long-distance running, you only need some milestones for releases, but never ever 1 week or 2 week sprints

1-2 week sprints always seemed like a great way to accumulate tech debt as people rush to complete their stories. Doing good work can take time.

It's also great to stretch 1.5-week tickets into two-week tickets since after you merged it all there is no time to pick up some other thing.
Post reply on HN